This
study compares the development of children living in institutions to
the development of formerly institutionalized children now living in
Romanian foster homes established by the Network. (Both groups of
children are also compared to a group of never-institutionalized
Romanian children living with their biological families.) The domains
of development studied include brain, behavior, social-emotional
development, attachment, cognition, language development, and physical
growth. The goals of the study are:

to
examine the effects, across a number of domains, of early social
deprivation experienced by young children raised in Romanian
institutions

to
determine to what extent an intervention (in this case, placing the
child with a foster family) could remediate the negative effects of
institutionalization

Three
groups of young children are being studied: 66 children raised in
institutions and remaining institutionalized, 70 removed from
institution and placed in foster homes screened, and trained under the
auspices of the Network, and 72 never-
institutionalized children living in their biological homes who serve
as a community control group.

Each
of the children in the study were given a baseline assessment,
performed between May and September 2001. Each child would then be
assessed at 9 months, 18 months, 30 months and 42 months of age. (Some
of the children will only receive two, or even one assessment
post-baseline, as they were older at the beginning of the study than
some of the follow-up assessment ages. For example, children aged 28
months in April, 2001 received a baseline assessment, and follow-up
assessments at 30 and 42 months, while children aged 6 months at the
beginning of the study will receive a baseline assessments, plus
assessments at each of the four later assessment points.)

These measures
will allow us to get a relatively detailed and integrated picture of
the children’s cognitive, social/emotional, physical, and
brain development over time. We hope the data will provide insight into
the effects of deprivation and of a differentially timed intervention
on each of these domains. With these data, the Network hopes to provide
evidence for a number of hypotheses. We hope to demonstrate that,
compared to the institutionalized group, the foster care group and
never institutionalized group will exhibit:

higher levels
of cognitive functioning

better
physical development

more advanced
social/communicative relatedness

better social
interactions with primary caregivers

more normal
brain physiology

It is also
anticipated that the foster care group will master behavioral tasks
believed to be associated with specific brain functions earlier and
more accurately than the institutionalized group. The data will also
elucidate the effects of the timing of intervention on developmental
outcome.

In terms of brain
functioning, we hope to show the effects of early social deprivation on
pattern of frontal brain electrical activity, and normalization of
these patterns after intervention; and the effects of early social
deprivation and intervention upon neural systems involved in the
processing of social-emotional stimuli.

Data
have been collected and are currently being analyzed. Some baseline
data have been fully analyzed and published: